Monthly Feature

Film Noir at The Loft

There’s big trouble in the big city when film noir comes to The Loft Cinema for a month of classic thrillers featuring tough guys, dangerous dames and deadly deeds!

“I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me.” – Humphrey Bogart, In a Lonely Place

The collective sigh of relief heaved at the end of World War II ought to have inspired Hollywood to release a flood of sunny, optimistic “happily ever after” films. Think again. Instead, having seen too much warfare, too much poverty and too much of the dark side of human nature, writers and directors responded by crafting gritty, bitter thrillers that slapped our romantic illusions in the face and held a knife to the throat of the American Dream. Film noir reveled in all the sex, violence and cynicism that had previously been suppressed in cinema, spinning paranoid, hardboiled tales of hapless suckers and wicked femme fatales making their way through the darkly expressionistic streets of cities gone to seed. And the kicker is, audiences not only took it – they loved it. Take a walk on the wild side with five incredible, essential film noir classics showcasing the best of the genre’s trademark shadow-drenched aesthetic, murderously malevolent narratives and helplessly doomed lovers (played by some of Hollywood’s biggest stars), all shown on the big screen, as they were meant to be seen!

Don’t miss Tucson Museum of Art’s new exhibition, “Into the Night: Modern and Contemporary Art and the Nocturne Tradition,” running 2/27-16 – 7/10/16. Visit tucsonmuseumofart.org for more information.

Wed., March 23

One of the most baroque and bleak of all film noirs, stars iconic tough guy Richard Widmark (Panic in the Streets) and Laura beauty Gene Tierney, under the hard-edged direction of Oscar-nominated Jules Dassin.